There are 3 choices, 3 votes for Nephilem's debate

Does God have to be good?

• I think so

  You are, perhaps accidentally, going to the base of ehtical argumentation: WHY be ethical? For what purpose. Many Christians and the like will say God is good because He defines good (i.e., if he wants to drink your blood, that's good. if he tells us to bite the nipples off of people who sneeze twice in a row, that's what "good" is). But assuming there is something aside from a really powerful guy defining right and wrong out there--that there is something inherently good about things rather than a list and random bits God decided. Why would God be good? Like you said, He is omniscient. Power may corrupt, but it is harder to corrupt those wise and fair. Wouldn't an omniscient being be the most wise of all? Wouldn't He be aware of being "corrupted"?
  
  He has the Supreme Understanding of all logic and reasoning and empathy in the universe and then some. He knows what's good and what's bad, and He chooses that path because He knows it is the best one.

  Voted for by Weydon.

  View 2 comments Hide Comments

  Please login or register to comment.

  Registration is required because of issues with spam. It is fast and free! This author would LOVE to get a comment from you, please join!

  • right now

    Adding your comment:
  • 
    TeChNoWC
    August 2
    Edit | Reply
    What is to say that God couldn't making biting people's nipples off a good thing, and that it has good results?
    
    In other words, it is assumed that in our world, biting people's nipples off for sneezing has no religious, ethical, biological or social benefit. It achieves no greater good. One could argue it does, but most would assume that it doesn't.
    
    So instead, God could create a world where biting people's nipples off for sneezing WOULD be a good thing - maybe, biologically, in this world anyone retaining their nipples after sneezing are highly prone to catching a disease within mere seconds and are in desperate, immediate need of their nipples being removed. Maybe it can be done by other means, or maybe not. But if it came down to it biting someone's nipples off to save their life would be charitable.
    
    Scenarios such as this do not address our understandings of the fundamental concepts of morality. To say that God couldn't create a world like such (even if our world is a better option), is to pre-suppose that God could only create the world exactly as it is, which seems to me very presumptious.
    
    In this sense, God can easily 'choose' the forms in which morality takes and can making biting nipples off a good thing in such an instance.
    The fundamentals of morality, however are another question (eg doing 'good' is trying to, fundamentally, help other people).
    All we know are these fundamentals, and no others, even though these fundamentals themselves are unprovable and highly debatable. Morality in relation to something (defining it by 'what is moral is what is best for everyone (utilitarianism) or something along these lines) is measurable HAD we already established this as assumed; however it isn't. Morality in 'essence' is immeasurable, or testable, but more of a spiritual concept (human understanding always beats any natural testifiability).
    
    You may well be right that God cannot interfere with the fundamentals of morality, though I would highly doubt that He could not affect scenario morality (in effect He could just about make of morality whatever He wished under such pretenses). But even in our little understanding -our only knowledge of essence morality is what we innately feel is right in 'this' dimension - we cannot assume outright that God cannot define morality, nor is He unjust in doing so - and this does not necessarily have to mean that 'in some outside way rape is still bad even though God deemed it alright'. No, you would only be still clinging to your base understanding of morality. Firstly, rape is scenario morality and therefore could probably very easily be made moral in an alternate world by God - and secondly, if God is the Highest authority (not just by word but by very means), then when God calls something white, it becomes white; black, it becomes black, and, hypothetically, by every facet of its nature, by some way which we both find incrompehensible, what is immoral becomes moral.
    
    I do not think that God has any plan to do any of this, as scripture would indicate; and the Bible could possibly (I haven't looked into it that well) support your theory that God cannot change morality. It may well be a property of His that is eternal, unchangeable. It just 'is'. Scripture does tell us that God has limits in terms of His character - God cannot lie, for instance. When it comes to interfering with will, we assume 'God could do it but by His nature chooses not to', yet if God 'cannot lie' - does this mean to say merely He never would due His nature or that He is actually unable? In some way the two ideas could be one in the same. Really if one eternally wouldn't, and one has eternal qualities that we assumedly know can be eternally relied upon to never change or be breached (perfection), then there are absolutes that come about simply via proxy because of this - some of these things being, perhaps, an unchangeable morality, an inability to lie (which would be sin), etc etc. Maybe God still COULD in some penultimate sense, but practically, He can't.
    

  Please register or login to comment! It's totally free
• right now

  Adding your reply:
• Your Comment: